Apr. 21, 2012

A message to Levon Helm was among the items left at the end of his driveway in Woodstock following his death on Thursday from cancer. Flowers, a candle and a poster were also left at the entrance through which thousands have passed on their way to Helm's Midnight Ramble house concerts.

Written by

John W. Barry

Poughkeepsie Journal

Online

Visit www.poughkeepsiejournal.com to watch videos featuring Helm; to listen to audio of a discussion about his life; and to read about his career, the Midnight Ramble, The Band, the movies he has appeared in and more.

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Elvis Costello and Wavy Gravy are among the many people — famous and not famous — remembering Levon Helm, the longtime Woodstock musician and resident who has died.

"No other drummer ever sang with such sadness and longing. Few singers of any kind could manage it," Costello, who performed at Helm's Midnight Ramble house concert, wrote on www.elviscostello.com. "...I know I’m not alone in being thankful for all he gave us while he was here and know that it will endure while people still have humour and heart. "

A message to Helm has been placed on the marquees at the Bardavon 1869 Opera House in Poughkeepsie and Broadway Theater at Ulster Performing Arts Center in Kingston — "Ramble On Levon." UPAC is owned by the Bardavon.

Hugh Romney, known as Wavy Gravy, who along with the Hog Farm commune fed hundreds of thousands at the Woodstock Music and Art Fair, at which The Band played in Aug. 1969, wrote a haiku for Helm, who grew up in Turkey Scratch, Ark.:

Turkey Scratch's songDrum and Strum a MandolinRamble On Levon

Ulster County musician Happy Traum met Levon Helm in 1968, after the drummer from Arkansas had arrived in Woodstock to reunite with Bob Dylan, who lived in town at the time.

On Friday, Traum, a day after the 71-year-old Helm died of cancer, spoke of a guy who achieved worldwide success but never got so famous that he forgot his small-town roots. Helm grew up in Turkey Scratch, Ark., on his father’s cotton farm and remained in Woodstock for more than four decades after arriving in the late 1960s.

“He was so well-known and successful and such an admired musician — everyone wanted to play with Levon — and at the same time he was such a small-town, community-minded guy,” said Traum, a Woodstock resident and close friend of Helm’s who sat in often at Helm’s Midnight Ramble house concerts. “His fan base included the stonemasons and the carpenters and the cops and the firefighters and the rescue squad guys, and that was who he loved to play for. ... I think his heart was in small-town Arkansas and he transferred that to small-town Catskills and embraced the Town of Woodstock as a hometown kind of thing. There is something very telling to me about that, that he loved to play for his hometown people.”

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Helm in February won his third consecutive solo Grammy. He and his fellow members of The Band, who backed up Dylan decades ago, were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994.

Helm died of cancer Thursday. By Friday morning, a candle, flowers and messages had been placed at the end of his driveway.

“He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation,” Dylan wrote on his website, www.bobdylan.com. “This is just so sad to talk about. I still can remember the first day I met him and the last day I saw him. We go back pretty far and had been through some trials together. I’m going to miss him, as I’m sure a whole lot of others will too.”

Former President Bill Clinton, who like Helm was born in Arkansas, released a statement that read, in part: "Levon was one of America’s great musicians...He never forgot his roots."

Ulster County resident Garth Hudson, who was a member of The Band with Helm, wrote on his website that he was “terribly sad.”

“Thank you for 50 years of friendship and music,” Hudson wrote. “Memories that live on with us. No more sorrows, no more troubles, no more pain. He went peacefully to that beautiful marvelous wonderful place. ... Levon, I’m proud of you.”

Academy Award-winning actress Jane Fonda attended several Midnight Rambles in 2010, when she was in the Hudson Valley filming “Peace, Love & Misunderstanding,” a movie that opens June 8.

She wrote on her blog this week about Helm, with whom she appeared in the 1984 television movie, “The Dollmaker.” Helm was an actor as well as a musician.

“He was kind and deep and devoted to music ...” Fonda wrote on www.janefonda.com after learning that Helm was dying. “ I am so sad.”

Danny Louis is an Ulster County resident who graduated from Rondout Valley High School and went on to perform with Gregg Allman and Joe Cocker and currently plays with Gov’t Mule. Louis performed multiple times with the Levon Helm Band, at the Midnight Ramble and during road shows.

“I always felt two main things when I got the opportunity to play with him,” Louis said. “One was privilege, and the other was joy — and it was infectious and contagious. I think my own joy of playing music was encouraged by him in so many different ways. Levon had a gift that was undeniably healing and universal. He could sing and play and within a fraction of a second you knew it was him. Anytime I ever played with him, he took the time to tell me ‘thanks’ and that he really enjoyed it. And I always said, ‘No. Thank you. I really enjoyed it.’”